Dr Venkatraman Ramakrishnan wins Nobel prize in Chemistry

An India-born structural biologist whose quest for scientific excellence took him from undergraduate schools in India to graduate and post-doc studies in the US and research in the UK was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work on proteins that control life. Dr Venkatraman ‘Venky’ Ramakrishnan, 58, who had his early education in the temple town of Chidambaram (Tamil Nadu) and Vadodara (Gujarat), before he made tracks to the US, joined the long list of peripatetic Indians who had early education in India but thrived in the western academic eco-system, to have won the Nobel. Also with a chemistry Nobel, Indians or those with an India-connect figure in all prize categories. The Swedish Nobel Committee awarded the prize to Dr Ramakrishnan, who is currently affiliated with the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, for his work on protein-producing ribosomes, and its translation of DNA information into life. He will share the prize with Dr Thomas Steitz of Yale University, Connecticut, and Dr Ada Yonath of Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. In a statement following the announcement of the award, Dr Ramakrishnan expressed gratitude to “all of the brilliant associates, students and post-docs who worked in my lab as science is a highly collaborative enterprise’’. He credited the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and the University of Utah for supporting his work and the collegiate atmosphere there that made it all possible. “The idea of supporting long-term basic research, like that at LMB, does lead to breakthroughs, the ribosome is already starting to show its medical importance,’’ he said.
Other Nobel prize winners include Rabindranath Tagore (Lit, 1913) C V Raman (Physics, 1930) Hargobind Khorana (Medicine, ’68) Mother Teresa (Peace, 1979) S Chandrashekhar (Physics, 1983) Amartya Sen (Economics, 1998) and winners with an India connection include R K Pachauri - 2007 for peace, heads UN panel on climate change; V S Naipaul -2001 for lit, Trinidad born of Indian origin; Dalai Lama - 1989 for peace. Leader of Tibetans in exile; Rudyard Kipling - 1907 (Lit). Born in Bombay; Ronald Ross - 1902 (Med). Born in Almora